CrisisCamp
Crisiscamp was big fun but now my brain is full of interesting projects.
Some possible ones are:
Crisispreparedness Badges for Facebook
1) It would inspire people to become educated in regards to crisis preparedness. Perhaps even having them fulfill specific tasks.
2) it would educate people’s friends and hopefully inspire them to train or do preparedness tasks
3) it would provide a list of trained people and their contact info to the crisis organizers
Creating an Emergency Tech Corp of responders
w Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and Burners without Borders.
The head of the LA fire Dept invited them down in the Fall for first hand training and use cases.
Codeathon
doing FOSS software for crisis handling and preparedness
and the craziest one…
Traveling Instant WIFI
like an RV w a gennie that has a satellite hookup that could provide instant wifi to all wifi enabled phones and computers.
a dictionary of crisis terminology
seeded with folkonomies from google or amazon
since common vocab seemed a severe issue (to me at least)
Yep it was a fun weekend!
![Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed -- [original version]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RZwM3GvaTRM/default.jpg)
June 15th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I think a much better investment of the time and money necessary for the “Travelling Instant WiFi” idea would be in implementing the 802.11s meshing standard for Linux. That would enable, at a minimum, off-the-shelf routers (e.g., LinkSys WRT54G) to retrofitted with FOSS firmware and implement a mesh. Combined with individual users similarly outfitted, a mesh connection could be propagated from the edge of the effected crisis area or existing hardened network access points. If its good enough for the OLPC project, it should be ready for prime time.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
GOOD point but I also would like for it to help with people’s cell phones… so maybe a cell phone app to help? or I guess if the mesh is done correctly any phone with wifi can connect to it? haven’t researched that enough…
We could create a Linux WIFI mesh team (heh heh I can see people w facebook badges already!) Though the main issue there might be power… ponder ponder cause I was thinking of it having charging stations off the gennie.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:27 am
hi! i had big fun too…enjoyed your session on gaming. been telling friends in austin about your blog.
June 16th, 2009 at 6:32 am
[...] are reports from other campers including: Patrick Svenburg of the Gov Labs blog and Microsoft, Silona, and Gwynne On Dot [...]
June 20th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
So received this AWESOME reply from Sascha Meinrath
”
Well, we’ve hacked both gPhones and iPhones to do ad-hoc meshing:
http://www.olsr.org/?q=iphone-port
http://www.olsr.org/?q=node/30
I’ve also attached our recommendations to the FCC from the 06-119 proceeding
(Recommendations of the Independent Panel Reviewing the Impact of Hurricane
Katrina On Communications Networks), as well as a report we prepared for the FCC
on these issues.
I wrote up a more mainstream article for Gov Tech as well (Gov Tech’s site is
fubar, but it’s all Creative Commons and Reclaim the Media has a copy):
http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/communications_rights/disaster_response_the_good_the_bad_and_the_ugly
Overall, however, very little documentation exists (it’s all still in our heads
and not down on paper). The good news is that ad-hoc mesh networking
_absolutely works_ for emergency response.
Hope these help,
–Sascha